THE parents of teenage murderer Josh Davies have said their “hearts go out” to the grief- stricken mum of his 15-year-old victim Rebecca Aylward.

Speaking exclusively to Wales on Sunday, Hayley and Steven Davies said they did not blame grieving mum Sonia Oatley for speaking out against him.

After the trial, the schoolgirl’s mum said she was “dissatisfied” with 16-year-old Davies’ conviction and wanted to “tear him apart”.

In emotive comments revealing the raw pain of a mother’s loss, she told reporters: “I wanted him to suffer the same way Becca did. I wanted his mother to know what this feels like. I wanted her to go through the same pain, because she created this monster.

“I have heard nothing from her. I don’t know what she is thinking.”

Now, explaining their reason for going public for the first time, Mr and Mrs Davies insisted they did not want people to “take sides”, adding: “We just want people to know the truth.

“We just want to get our story out once, and that’s it. People can make their own minds up.”

In an astonishingly frank interview the couple – who still believe their son is innocent – revealed:

Their horror when they first learnt the son, who had “never been in trouble”, had been arrested in connection with a brutal murder;

How they had wanted to reach out to Becca’s family, but had been warned off by police; and

Their son had started collecting old and antique knives, swords and guns at the age of nine – but that he was not “disturbed”.

In a crime that shocked the UK, Davies was found guilty last month of murdering his ex-girlfriend over a bet for a free breakfast.

He smashed Becca’s skull with a heavy rock the size of a rugby ball after luring her to woods near his home.

In chilling detail, the court heard Davies told two of his friends what he’d done and showed one of them the body, telling him to: “Pull back her hood and look at her face.” After the murder Davies spent the evening watching TV at his aunt’s house, acting like nothing had happened. He tried to create a false alibi by leaving Facebook posts about “chilling out with friends” while watching Strictly Come Dancing.

Yesterday, sitting in the front room of the terraced house in Aberkenfig, near Bridgend, in which their son spent 13 years of his life, Hayley, 38, insisted she felt “sorry” for former friend Sonia.

She said: “I don’t hold anything against her for saying the things she is saying because she thinks he did it... that’s what I would say if it happened to me.

“Sonia has spoken about how I never got in touch with her afterwards, but the police told me not to.

“As a mother to a mother I want to see her and talk to her.”

The sickening violence of Becca’s death led to a tide of public revulsion against Davies, with Facebook pages and newspaper website comments branding him “evil”. One leading criminologist said the teenager exhibited some signs of being a psychopath.

They are comments that continue to sting Hayley and her husband Steven, 42, who have two other sons aged 13 and nine.

“Everybody who knows us and Josh are 100% behind us,” insisted housewife Hayley.

“It is the people who don’t know him who are saying these things and I know it’s not true, so I don’t listen.”

Steven, who works as a carer, added: “I don’t like people saying it but I can’t hold anything against Sonia after what she has been through.

“All I would say to people is there are two sides to every story. You don’t know him as an individual so how can you judge?”

Meanwhile the pair described their son’s ex-girlfriend, who was killed just hundreds of metres from their home in October 2010, as “lovely”.

Sitting on a red leather sofa with one of the family’s five cats curled up by her side and a framed photo of a four-year-old Josh cuddling his baby brother on the wall behind her, Hayley said: “Becca was a lovely girl, she was friendly and never said a bad word to me or to any of our family. Every time she and Josh were together they always seemed to be happy and laughing. Josh used to spend a lot of time up at her house and her sister and brother came down to ours sometimes. They were the same age as our two younger boys and so they got on well.”

In the face of an outpouring of anger and questions over his upbringing, the mum of three maintained she was “proud” of the way her son had been brought up, saying he was always “respectful” and a doting brother to his younger siblings.

“I think I have been really lucky,” she said. “He has never given us a minute’s trouble. He has never been in trouble with the police, he didn’t go out drinking with his friends, didn’t smoke, he had never been involved in a fight.

“Our other two sons are the same. They have respect for everybody.

“Josh is just caring, he always has been, and the other two are as well.”

On October 24 last year, out of the blue, Steven picked up a call from his mum saying Josh had been arrested.

While a distraught Hayley stayed at home to look after their two other sons, Steven rushed to the police station in Cardiff where Davies was being held, beginning a 16 hour-a- day, four-day vigil in its foyer, where he waited for news of his son.

From the beginning, he said, he was “100%” positive he was innocent. “I just said there is no way,” he recalled. “He is just not capable of doing that.

“You just go into autopilot. I never believed he did it and I never will.”

The last time Hayley had seen her son was on the day of Becca’s murder, when he had popped home on the way to his grandmother’s house.

Hayley said: “He called in and went upstairs to his bedroom to get some money. “All he said was, ‘see you later mum, I’m going for breakfast’.”

It’s a parting phrase that has since taken on a macabre tone given the importance of the disturbing “bet” in the subsequent court case.

During his trial at Swansea Crown Court, jurors heard that later that day Davies met up with Becca, having lured her out to meet him by suggesting he wanted to get back together with her.

When she found him in a nearby park on a thundery and rain-lashed Saturday he led her to nearby woodland and attempted to strangle her before smashing her skull with a heavy rock the size of a rugby ball.

Having been promised a free breakfast by a friend if he killed her, the court heard that shortly before Rebecca died, Davies winked and laughed as he told the friend: “Ah, you might have to buy me a breakfast.”

In his defence Davies claimed a friend was the culprit.

He said he and Becca had intended to “freak out” his school friends by pretending he had killed her, but that his mate had lashed out with a rock after discovering the joke.

Back in their home, surrounded by photos of their son, Hayley and Steven looked haunted as they describe the months they spent on “autopilot” waiting for his trial.

“You are more concerned for him,” Hayley said. “We saw him every day for three months. We talked about things that were happening, took people up to see him, but also talked a lot about the case.”

She added: “It feels to me almost like we are grieving because he has been taken away from us.

“Luckily of course he is still alive and he can still speak, but the house is empty without him.

“His brothers miss him terribly but at the same time they both know he is innocent. They have always looked up to their brother. They still do.”

Confronting newspaper claims her son was “disturbed” because he collected knives and swords, Hayley said he had started collecting old and antique knives, swords and guns when he was nine, adding they were “just things he’s collected over the years”.

She said her son, a keen quad- biker, reader and computer addict, had always been interested in history and fantasy books.

When the trial began in June this year, Hayley and Steven were there every day.

“We had waited eight or nine months and this was his time to tell his side of the story and he did so truthfully and honestly,” insisted Hayley, adding one of the worst moments for her was the graphic account of Becca’s autopsy.

When the jury returned a guilty verdict with a 10-2 majority, the family were horrified, but they insist they will keep fighting for their son.

Sitting opposite his wife in a deep leather armchair, Steven said he would always protest his son’s innocence, adding: “As he still says, ‘the truth will out in the end.’

“We are proud of how he has dealt with this.”

His wife added: “It is surprising how much strength a person has got.

“I honestly think that is because he knows he is innocent.”

As the rain again fell in Aberkenfig yesterday, Hayley praised the murdered schoolgirl’s mum for taking to the stand as a witness for the prosecution. “As a mother your heart just goes out to her and in fairness she was really brave to get up there,” she said.

But whatever the sentiments, her words or sympathy are unlikely to cut any ice with Becca’s family.

Their words, spoken after the trial, tell of a family united in devastation and struggling to find answers.

“The pain and horror of losing Rebecca in such horrendous circumstances cannot be put into words,” the said.

“Since that Saturday in October 2010 our lives have stopped.

“Rebecca was killed in a senseless and barbaric act.

“She died at the hands of someone she loved and trusted.

“We will never forget what he did to her or forgive him for destroying our family.”